Saturday, June 11, 2016

Voting matters

Y'no, it tires me. So much of our lives is dictated by politics. Politics is the governing of people within society. Everyone in society, the community (greater, or small), has an explicit stake. It is astounding in ignorance that people say they are not interested in politics, or that it does not concern them. It is also astounding in ignorance that people hold stupid, illogical, non-factual opinions. Mathematics states the obvious, "two and two are four"; that equation is reality, to argue otherwise is invincible ignorance. So, it is two items that vex my patience: one is the righteous apathy, and the other is intransigence towards reality.

Now, i have an acquaintance who has regularly quoted me, "If voting could change anything it would be made illegal". He thinks one of the Berrigan brothers said that. Now, it (or a similar statement) has been attributed to the sarcastic wit of Mark Twain, and to the anarchism of Emma Goldman. An internet search has the earliest recorded use appearing in a Lowell Massachusetts paper in 1976 in a guest essay by one, Robert Borden; so perhaps this is the source of many, a person not really known by the public says/writes a pungent statement and it it gets placed in a conjectured appropriate mouth/pen. But the adage lives, and has always lived here. The enslaved were denied the vote. When they were emancipated, they received the political right to vote, and there was a systemic reaction to have those individuals denied again. In the 1860s negro citizens first did not have the vote, and then did. From the 1870s to the mid 1960s many did not have the vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 repeated history to give people the vote again, and again there was a systemic reaction against it.

All this around the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began demographic shift in the two major political parties. In 1964 the Republicans nominated a candidate the country would not accept, and the vote went heavily Democratic. The people benefiting from the Voting Rights Act would electorally provide the Democratic Party more votes because of the issues advanced by the Democrats; but on a racial divide the white southern vote would leave the Democratic Party in protest, and join the 'Yankee' party of the North—the Republicans. So, the Democrats increased their majority, but in doing so created a conservative reaction, which was exploited to successfully divide the Democrats; but still that was insufficient. A greater suppression of the vote was engendered, and promoted nation wide. Not only on racial grounds, but on economic, and social grounds. Every manner of trick, ordinance, and propaganda was employed. We live in a country where the minority party controls most of the government.

We see this in three people/groups personified. Richard Nixon ran as a 'law and order' candidate, and had a southern strategy. This was achieved in painting the Democrats as the party that catered to blacks, this brought many white racists to the Republican Party. It was a tight race in 1968, but it was enough for him to win. In 1972, the election was a landslide. But, yet, Nixon had to cheat, and Watergate exposed him. Newt Gingrich and his allies would not function in a democracy, if they had not control, they would use any political means necessary. No Democrat was secure in completion of his office. This was executed in 1998-9 in the impeachment of Bill Clinton over a sexual peccadillo. The hypocrisy of his antagonists is blatant on the pages of history, from Gingrich to the special prosecutor Ken Starr. And in the presidential election of 2000, when the presidency was usurped by the Republican Party.

The Secretary of State, of most states, oversees the elections and is the agent of legal fraud of he so chooses. He can be just, or corrupt. In almost cases, in this present era, a Republican official in this office is a partisan operative who disregards the spirit of justice, and the letter of any law that would impede or circumvent the party's goal. The Republican Party is not a political party as much as it is a criminal organisation. It is not a democratic party. It is the usual political tool of the plutocracy, and oligarchy. It is their cat's paw. It does their will, writes laws to their benefit, distributes wealth and taxation as their agent. In return they have their positions provided for.

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